1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a catalyst, and more particularly to a novel catalyst for recovering high-quality light oil from materials to be treated, such as woody hydrocarbons, waste plastics and waste oils, and a preparation method thereof.
2. Background of the Related Art
In the field for the production of new renewable energy, technologies for producing energy using bio-mass, which are now in practical use, include a technology of producing bio-ethanol using starch crops such as maize and cassava, a technology for producing bio-diesel from oil and fat plants such as rape, or vegetable fats, a method of either burning woody materials to produce heat or making wood chips for use as fuel for cogeneration from woody material, a technology for processing waste to produce RDF or RPF, a technology for thermally decomposing woody and waste at high temperatures to produce synthetic oil, a technology for either filtering or heating, distilling and purifying waste oil to produce lower fuel, and a technology of using biogas (e.g., LDF gas) directly as an energy source to generate power, treat city sewage, treat distillery waste or produce methane gas in livestock wastewater treatment plants. Recently, technologies for using woody biomass to produce bio-butanol and the like have been attempted.
Technologies for producing liquid fuel from non-edible biomass, which are evaluated as future technologies, include a technology for producing bio-ethanol by microbial decomposition, and a technology for producing bio-butane fuel or lower synthetic fuel which can be used in a mixture with gasoline after gasification. EVK (Germany) developed a technology of producing diesel oil directly from waste using a zeoilte catalyst.
The above-mentioned three types of methods have respective technological features, and fuels produced thereby have many differences in their characteristics and quality.
The above-mentioned types and levels of technology have limitations either due to the use of imported expensive eatable crops as raw materials or due to the use of old technology and the absence of breakthrough catalyst technology, even though various methods are being attempt to overcome such limitations. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop breakthrough technologies, including catalysts and processes which can be used in decomposing cellulosic non-edible biomass such as plants, woods and agricultural byproducts.
In regard to catalysts for cracking waste plastics, Korean Patent No. 0330929 discloses a catalyst for decomposing waste plastics, which is obtained by ion-exchanging clinoptilolite-type zeolite with hydrogen, and a method for decomposing waste plastics using the catalyst. Also, Korean Patent No. 0322663 discloses a method of catalytically cracking waste plastics in a fluidized bed by carrying out a dehydrogenation reaction in contact with a nickel or nickel alloy catalyst while introducing an aluminosilicate based solid acid catalyst.
Meanwhile, methods for synthesizing zeolites from various raw materials are disclosed in Korean Patent Nos. 0350776, 0297321, 0335657, 0656177, 0474965 and 0801539. In addition, various methods for hydrothermal synthesis of zeolites are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,966,883, 4,088,739 and 4,017,590.
However, these zeolites do not make it easy to recover good-quality light oil from materials to be treated, such as waste plastics, woody hydrocarbons and waste oils.